Hot on the heels of AMD’s stunning 12.11 release, NVIDIA has now introduced the new 310.54 beta driver, supposedly improving Kepler performance by up to 26% in certain games.

In order to compete against AMD’s surging driver development program, NVIDIA is stepping up to the plate by offering their GeForce customers something similar. While the primary focus of their new 310.54 drivers are to offer optimal release-day performance and DX11 optimizations for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Assassin’s Creed III, there are some additional benefits included as well. According to the driver’s release notes, many games will see up to 16% better framerates even though the lion’s share of improvements are reserved for the aforementioned big-name titles.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Assassin’s Creed III are likely going to be two of this holiday season’s hottest titles and NVIDIA worked with both game’s developers to include TXAA support. This should lead to high quality anti-aliasing without a significant framerate reduction. Additional optimizations for these titles are included within the 310.54 driver as well, allowing for an approximate 26% framerate increase over the WHQL version currently posted on NVIDIA’s download page. If you have an NVIDIA card and will be buying Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 or Assassin’s Creed III, be sure to install this driver.

Source: GeForce.com

Alongside the aforementioned items, NVIDIA has added an automatic LOD bias for SGSSAA (Sparse Grid Supersampling Anti-Aliasing) which can be applied through NVIDIA’s Inspector tool. The passage below is from a GeForce.com post which details the changes to this ultra-high quality AA routine:

Several years ago Fullscene Sparse Grid Supersampling Anti-Aliasing was added to the GeForce drivers as an advanced anti-aliasing option for those with high-end systems. When enabled and correctly configured, SGSSAA significantly increases the quality of Multisample Anti-Aliasing, helping remove aliasing that even 8xMSAA struggles with.

Configuring SGSSAA to reach this level of detail can at times be tricky due to the need to counteract texture blurring that occurs when using the technique. With a Negative LOD Bias, applied via NVIDIA Inspector, texture quality can be restored, but unfortunately the correct value can only be ascertained through trial and error.

Following repeated calls from users for a solution, we silently introduced an automatic LOD Bias feature in last month’s 310.33 beta driver, which we’re pleased to officially announce today. Now, users need only enable Sparse Grid Supersampling in the profile of a compatible game in NVIDIA Inspector, and the new feature will do the rest.